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The world’s first, full-service conservative Internet broadcast networkFri, 09 Dec 2016 13:41:19 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.6.116302432Trump announces Japanese telecom company will invest $50 billion and 50,000 jobs in the U.S.http://hotair.com/archives/2016/12/06/trump-announces-japanese-telecom-company-will-invest-50-billion-and-50000-jobs-in-the-u-s/
Tue, 06 Dec 2016 22:41:05 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=3934780Not only is this good news, notes Ben Shapiro, it comes without any strong-arming like we saw in the Carrier deal.

In the Carrier deal, Trump cudgeled Carrier into accepting a $7 million tax incentive in return for a $65 million operating loss by threatening Carrier’s parent company with the loss of billions of dollars in federal contracts. That’s crony capitalism. It’s special incentives given to one company, crammed down with the warning that the government will club them into oblivion if they don’t take the deal.

Not so with SoftBank.

According to CNBC.com, SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son met with Trump at Trump Tower on Tuesday afternoon. Trump then announced that Son would invest $50 billion in the United States in order to create 50,000 jobs. Trump said on Twitter that “Masa said he would never do this had we (Trump) not won the election!” In October, media reported on SoftBank’s $100 billion investment fund set up with Saudi Arabia; CNBC reports that according to Dow Jones, the $50 billion will come from that fund. It was unclear whether the fund would have been slated to invest $50 billion in the United States without Trump’s election, but we have no evidence that Trump was fibbing.

Is it true, as Trump claims, that SoftBank wouldn’t have done this if Hillary had won the election? Quite possibly, yeah. SoftBank owns 80 percent of Sprint; they’ve been trying to acquire T-Mobile for years now. But they ran into trouble with the Obama administration on antitrust grounds, as reducing the number of major U.S. carriers from four to three (AT&T, Verizon, and the Sprint/T-Mobile hybrid) would have further hurt competition in the industry. Obama’s FCC and DOJ blocked the deal and SoftBank gave up on the merger in 2014. But the company’s interest didn’t fade and Son kept his eye on the election, knowing that a Republican victory would make for a very different antitrust environment. Trump delivered on November 8th so now Son’s delivering for him with a much bigger political win than the Carrier deal: 50,000 jobs and $50 billion in investments — if the Sprint/T-Mobile deal is approved, of course. I have a feeling that the Sprint/T-Mobile deal will be approved.

Given that the investment fund with Saudi Arabia already existed, though, it’s possible that the same offer would have been floated to President Hillary. Fifty thousand jobs is a nice headline for any incoming president, even one who neglected the Rust Belt. Son would have tried to sell her on the merger by encouraging her to forge her own political identity distinct from Obama’s by approving the deal. Hillary would have had to balance the benefit from that “50 and 50” incentive against the cost of her base howling at her that she’s caving to big business already by quashing an antitrust action that Obama’s DOJ opposed. It’s an interesting question whether she would have gone for it. Trump doesn’t have the same conflict among his own base, though, and deregulation was always on his and the GOP’s agenda, so this is an easy unconflicted win for him. Let’s just hope SoftBank keeps its promise.

Go figure that Trump would pass on running against weaker GOP fields in 2008 and 2012 to challenge a much stronger one this year. (Imagine a Trump/Romney battle o’ the businessmen three years ago, with Trump taking nasty potshots daily at how much less wealthy Mr. Nice Guy is.) Two possible explanations for that. One: Consultants have convinced him that voters are split so many ways among so many candidates this time that he could shock the world by winning an early state with, say, 15 percent of the vote based on name recognition alone. That’s unlikely — his unfavorable rating among Republicans stands at 57 percent, easily the worst for any presidential candidate from either party in 35 years — but futility won’t stop consultants from telling a guy with nine billion dollars what he wants to hear.

The other explanation: There’s a catch. There’s got to be. There’s no way Trump will subject himself to the humiliation of finishing 20 points behind Bush, Rubio, or Walker in the early states. One way or another, it’ll never reach that point. Jamie Weinstein of the Daily Caller thinks today’s event is actually a fake-out and that Trump’s planning to announce the formation of a Super PAC, not his candidacy. That way he can throw money around in the primary and play kingmaker without subjecting himself to rejection by the voters. Another possibility is that he jumps in, hangs around in the race for awhile so that he can participate in the debates, and then finds some pretext to drop out before Iowa if his polling continues to disappoint. He won’t subject himself to the caucuses and to a vote in New Hampshire unless, against all odds, he looks poised to win. What will the escape hatch be?

One interesting thing about having him in the race would be seeing how the media will respond to him. The press grumbles all the time that he’s a publicity whore and that they don’t want to reward him for it, but covering Trump means not having to cover more credible candidates like Rubio who pose a legit threat to Her Majesty. My guess is they’ll give him plenty of oxygen. Another interesting question if he gets in is who he’ll spend most of his time attacking. The smart play would be to go after Jeb, as it would endear him to righties and make him more of a factor in the race if Jeb took the bait. And he has knocked Jeb — but his strongest criticism so far has been reserved for Carly Fiorina, who’s currently at one or two percent in most polls, for getting canned at Hewlett-Packard. Having Trump in the race could be a gift to her if she’s prepared to counterattack. it’s tricky since she doesn’t want to be viewed as a joke candidate by association, but since most of the rest of the field will probably ignore Trump, standing up to him could get voters’ attention. Plus, Trump can get away with getting nasty with the rest of the field, as that would fit his niche as the populist outsider who’s tired of all these establishment phonies, but getting nasty with the one woman candidate running won’t come off as well. I wonder if he can resist.

Anyway. It’s more than 90 percent likely, I’d guess, that no Republican voters will ever get a chance to cast a ballot for him so let’s not overthink this. For a counterargument, though, that Trump should be taken seriously as a protest candidate, read Byron York from last month. “Donald Trump is the third party candidate running for the Republican nomination,” York wrote at the time. Right. Which raises the question: Why doesn’t he run as a real third-party candidate? He’s got the dough to pay for it and running as an independent could get him a slot against Hillary and the GOP nominee at the presidential debates next October, a much bigger and more elite stage than the 15-candidate scrum that the Republican primary debates will see.

Update: Yep, it’s happening. He’s in. For the next six months or so, anyway.

Interestingly, he went way off-script from the prepared remarks that were e-mailed to reporters earlier. I wonder what that’s about.

Update: Easy prediction: After spending the next six months reassuring righties that he’s a true-blue Republican and loyal party man, Trump will spend the general-election campaign next year dumping on the eventual nominee as a can’t-win loser.

]]>http://hotair.com/archives/2015/06/16/open-thread-the-classiest-presidential-announcement-youve-ever-seen/feed/3893866510Putin: I can’t be 100% sure that Syria will comply in getting rid of its chemical WMD; Update: Assad still moving weaponshttp://hotair.com/archives/2013/09/19/putin-i-cant-be-100-sure-that-syria-will-comply-in-getting-rid-of-its-chemical-weapons/
http://hotair.com/archives/2013/09/19/putin-i-cant-be-100-sure-that-syria-will-comply-in-getting-rid-of-its-chemical-weapons/#commentsFri, 20 Sep 2013 00:41:51 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=279530A little companion piece to the news yesterday that Assad might miss the very first deadline in the disarmament process.

The Kremlin must be such a fun place to work lately:

Speaking at a forum of journalists and political scientists, Russian president Vladimir Putin said that he could not be 100 percent sure that the government of Syria will comply with a plan to destroy chemical weapons. “Will we manage to carry it through? I can’t say 100 percent, but all that we have seen recently, in the last few days, inspires confidence that it is possible and that it will be done,” Putin said.

The key news out of Syria this week, by the way, isn’t the disarmament kabuki at the UN but the fact that the war-within-a-war among rebel groups is now fierce enough to attract major western media attention. The Journal has a long read today about jihadi outfits in northern and eastern Syria launching attacks against the Free Syrian Army (in one instance entitled, charmingly, “Operation Expunging Filth”). How do you fight the regime goon in front of you when you’re being shot at by the fanatic behind you? Good question:

Some FSA fighters now consider the extremists to be as big a threat to their survival as the forces of President Bashar al-Assad.

“It’s a three-front war,” a U.S. official said of the FSA rebels’ fight: They face the Assad regime, forces from its Lebanese ally Hezbollah, and now the multinational jihadist ranks of ISIS…

Along Syria’s border with Turkey, ISIS fighters are trying to wrest the four major crossings from other rebel units, in a bid to control supply routes, according to rebels battling the extremists, and Western officials.

In recent weeks, ISIS fighters have adopted a strategy of dropping back—taking rear positions—as rebels with the FSA alliance leave for front lines to fight government forces, allowing ISIS to build a presence in towns and villages left without security or services.

FSA leaders claim Obama’s dithering has been a propaganda coup for ISIS, who are now telling the locals that they’ll never be able to rely on a fickle America to protect them. I wonder too how much of O’s blathering about “red lines” has inadvertently encouraged the jihadis to be more aggressive about purging the “moderates” in their midst. If you’re a fanatic worried that the United States is about to jump into Syria, whether through strikes on Assad or more significant aid to the FSA, logically you’d want to weaken the moderates sooner rather than later. The better armed they are, the more they can threaten the new caliphate you’re trying to set up. Expunge “the filth” now and you don’t need to worry about them in the future. We already have reason to believe that Obama’s meaningless tough talk about “red lines” last year made it harder to neutralize Assad’s WMD; it’d be perversely fitting if it also made it harder to neutralize the jihadis on the other side.

The punchline to all this is that one of the things keeping the U.S. and western allies from arming the FSA more robustly is that they’re not quite antagonistic enough towards the jihadis who are fighting Assad. Time mag had an interesting piece a few days ago about how, while some Al Qaeda-type outfits wage war against the FSA in some parts of Syria, in other parts the two movements still unite for joint operations against Assad’s troops. If you’re a CIA analyst looking to arm the “moderates,” then, you have to deal not only with the risk that jihadis will crush the people you’re arming and take their weapons but also the risk that the people you’re arming will fight alongside the jihadis and maybe lend them their weapons. How do you negotiate that?

Speaking of neutralizing Assad’s WMD, here’s the man himself telling Fox News last night that America might need to pony up a cool billion in order to make it happen. The way this process has been going, I half-expect Obama to reject the idea out of hand and give him two billion instead.

The Syrian regime is again moving around its stockpile of chemical weapons, leaving the United States trying to figure out what Bashar al-Assad will do next with his deadly arsenal…

“There is activity at known chemical weapons storage sites,” one official said. “What is unclear is whether they are moving them to consolidate the stockpile and then declare it, or are they moving it around to conceal it” in advance of reporting it to international inspectors.